The invention relates to a printer having a receiving function of a facsimile and printing data outputted from an electronic equipment such as a personal computer.
There has existed a printer with a facsimile operation which is connected to a personal computer and which not only prints character data or image data from the personal computer but also functions as a facsimile apparatus. In association with the realization of low prices in recent years, such printer is generally widespread. In such printer with a facsimile operation, various improvements have been performed so that facsimile data can be received even during the printing operation of computer data from the personal computer.
First, the first conventional example will now be described. A printer with a facsimile operation disclosed in JP-A-63-212557 is constructed in a manner that when a facsimile signal is received during the reception of data from a personal computer, a receiving operation of an interface control with the personal computer is interrupted and a receiving operation of an interface control with the facsimile is executed. In such a construction, however, since a printing operation can be stopped and the operation can be immediately shifted to the facsimile reception mode, a purpose to give a priority to output of facsimile data can be realized. However, since the printing operation is actually accompanied with other operations such as delivery of a paper in the halfway of the printing, the stop of printing is not effective.
The second example will now be described in consideration of such processes. According to a printer disclosed in JP-A-5-292233 and JP-A-5-122429, when a facsimile signal is received during reception of data from a personal computer, the print-data from the personal computer is printed by an amount of one sheet and the sheet is delivered out and, after that, the printer starts printing on a next sheet.
In the above second conventional example, however, since the data from the facsimile through telephone line is always preferentially printed, if there is a facsimile reception while urgent important data is received from the personal computer and is printed, the data printing from the personal computer is stopped in the halfway or the printing of up to the sheet that is at present being printed is interrupted and then the printing of the facsimile reception data is started.